Joseph Andrewsby Henry FieldingPoor Joseph, like his biblical namesake, has been robbed, stripped of his clothes, and left by the side of a road. Up drives a coach, each one of whose genteel passengers, a microcosm of Georgian society, thinks of a good reason not to help him. Only the postillion, a boy who rides next to the driver, offers him his coat.

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson The one lesson of early fiction is don't get into a coach with an unreliable man. Rakish Robert Lovelace tricks the gorgeous Clarissa and before she knows what has happened, she is in St Albans, stigmatised as an eloper. How can she fend off her would-be seducer?

A Sentimental Journey by Laurence SterneThe author's alter ego Yorick tries out a two-person coach – called a désoligéant – in a coach park in Calais. Naturally he is accompanied by a lovely lady, lately arrived at his French inn. A chapter of charged conversation follows, before the chaise-hirer returns to release them from their amorous confines.

Evelinaby Fanny BurneyA trip to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens ends with callow, pulchritudinous Evelina foolishly climbing into a coach with the leering baronet Sir Clement Willoughby. They seem to be taking an unconscionable time to reach her smart West End lodgings and she begins to suspect that the coachman has been given instructions. Soon she is pulling down the window and threatening to yell for help.

Emma by Jane AustenAfter a cheery Christmas do at the Westons, Mr Elton is well lubricated with booze and ready to make his pitch. He nips into the coach with our heroine and is soon "making violent love" to her. It does not mean what you think: he is just proposing marriage – and is astounded to hear that Emma thought he was really after her dim-witted protégée Harriet.

Madame Bovaryby Gustave FlaubertThe erotic connotations of a coach are taken to a new extreme when our adulterous Normandy housewife has her assignation with Léon in Rouen. They meet at the cathedral and set off round the city in a coach with curtained windows. They drive round and round, all afternoon and evening, their relationship consummated on the move.

"Boule de Suif" by Guy de MaupassantBoule de Suif is a prostitute, travelling in a coach with respectable fellow passengers. They are stopped by a Prussian officer, who will not allow the coach to proceed until Boule agrees to sleep with him. She refuses; the other passengers want to get going, and press her to agree. She spends the night with him, but next day is treated as a pariah.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor DostoevskyBe careful in those St Petersburg streets! First Raskolnikov is almost run over by one coach (whose driver angrily lashes him with a whip), and then he enters the street where Marmeladov has just been run over by another coach. He takes the dying man home and meets Sonia, who will help redeem him.

Dracula by Bram StokerJonathan Harker travels to deepest Transylvania. "The crazy coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a stormy sea." As the mountains close in, his fellow passengers press gifts on him to "guard against the evil eye", but he doesn't quite get their terror. And why are they so keen to speed away after dropping him off?

Death Comes to Pemberley by PD JamesThe art of sleuthing comes to Mr Darcy's ancestral home in a whodunit that is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. Lydia, her husband, Wickham, and his militia friend Captain Denny are travelling to Pemberley together in a coach. What gay company! When the latter exits, shouting, into the Pemberley woods, the mystery is afoot.

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